Gotham - 'Knock, Knock'

"Maniax. With an X! It's more X-treme!"

Motives emerge as Theo Galavan's new gang goes to work, opening by kidnapping the Mayor and forcing him to announce that he has run off with a younger woman, then dropping people off a roof to spell out the name of the gang - Maniax! - in a far better display of precision people dropping than of spelling. Jerome is clearly interested in chaos, while Theo talks about cleansing fires a lot, like R'as al-Ghul with the serial numbers filed of.

Bruce tries to access his father's computer, but Alfred takes a hammer to it. Bruce sacks him, but rehires him on the promise that Alfred will teach him to fight; properly this time. Alfred then approaches Thomas Wayne's former confidante Lucius Fox to provide technical assistance, on the promise that if he proves untrustworthy he will be tucked up like a kipper.

James Frain looks almost as sad as I feel at the way this is going.

Gordon is put in charge of the Maniax investigation, and prevents the massacre of a bus full of cheerleaders, but the one member of the gang that they capture is killed by Tabitha using a sniper rifle. Just in case we thought Tabitha was a cool, collected professional, we see her and Barbara chasing the captive Mayor with whips for shiggles and oh god they're going to become a cheesy, exploitative hot evil lesbian item, aren't they? Fuck you, Gotham; and where is Montoya? We need her to represent! And perhaps even be the Question, because that would be kinda awesome, which Tababra isn't.

Barbara turns up at the precinct and Gordon pursues her, trying to persuade her to turn herself in. She tells him that she's not a good person and has the big member of the Maniax beat the crap out of him. Meanwhile, Jerome and the others shoot up the precinct, because as we discovered last season, fifty armed cops are entirely defenceless against four criminals; or one if he's Zsasz. Lee - who is still working; yay! - hides under a table and Nygma gets to rescue Kristen Kringle, but Commissioner Essen is killed and footage of the massacre sent to news outlets to destroy what little confidence remained in the GCPD. On the up side, it draws Bullock out of barkeeping.

On the one hand, I applaud Gotham for gamely departing from past canons and for trying to do something with Barbara, the ensemble whipping girl of last season. Unfortunately, what they're doing is... not good. It would be not good even if it didn't involve the only gay character in the show becoming an increasingly sexualised psychopath. Seriously; Batman comics have a pretty poor rep for equality, but damnit they had Montoya (you know; once they imported her from the Animated Series, along with Harvey Bullock.)

Do it!

On the plus side, we are not losing Bullock and Sean Pertwee's Alfred continues to be a delight, the scene in which he tells Fox a long, rambling story of this lairy mate of his who let him down and had to be tucked up like a kipper being a high point of this episode. The other is the massacre, which manages to avoid the many pitfalls of having a sadistic psychopath murder one of your principle female characters. On the other hand, one of the principle female characters in a show not replete with female characters has now been murdered, and it's the one who was in a position of authority.

Gotham's remaining female characters are Goddamn Barbara, the lead's girlfriend*, a slutty enforcer, a serially codependent file clerk with poor taste in men, and whatever the good god damn is going on with Selina Kyle becoming the Penguin's... secretary? bodyguard? strategic adviser? This is a city in dire need of a faceless gay avenger in a trenchcoat, suit and tie.

* Yes, she's a pathologist, but so far this Season not so much with the pathologising.